Prize acquiring game apparatuses such as crane game machines whose object is to acquire prizes stored in a housing provide interest of an operation, and use prizes of popular characters or the like so as to give challenge incentive to players. For this reason, a lot of these apparatuses are installed in general stores, shopping malls as well as game arcades. Conventionally various prize acquiring game apparatuses are proposed.
In such type of game apparatuses, a gripping section with arms (grip claws) which are freely opened/closed is provided in game space surrounded by transparent plate or semispheric shaped members so as to freely move to an arbitrary position and freely move up and down, and grabs prizes placed in the game space. In order to grab the prizes placed in the game space, a player operates operation buttons provided to an operation panel of the game apparatus so as to move the gripping section in a horizontal plane and locate the gripping section with respect to a desired prize. The player stops the gripping section in that position, allows the gripping section to automatically fall so as to grab the desired prize by means of the arms. The player allows the gripping section which grabs the prize to be automatically raised to a predetermined height by means of an elastic biasing force of the arm section and moves the gripping section in this state to a position just above the outlet in a horizontal plane. Thereafter, the arms are opened so that the prize is released and freely falls to the outlet. The prize which enters the outlet fall, is stored in a bottom portion of a discharged prize storage section below the outlet, and taken out from a prize ejecting port of the discharged prize storage section. In this state, one game is ended (for example, see Japanese Utility Model Application Publication 7-13756).